Hacker May Have Stolen Credit Card Data From PlayStation Users

Millions of PlayStation Network users got the scare of their life yesterday when Sony announced that their personal information, including credit card data and billing addresses, may have been stolen by a hacker.

On its company blog page, Sony said that it believed an "unauthorized person" obtained information from its 77 million-strong user base -- everything from names, to addresses to birth dates.

Also at risk: users' credit-card data.

"While there is no evidence at this time that credit card data was taken, we cannot rule out the possibility," a company spokesman said on Tuesday. "If you have provided your credit card data through PlayStation Network or Qriocity, out of an abundance of caution we are advising you that your credit card number (excluding security code) and expiration date may have been obtained."

The network was reportedly hacked into from April 17 to April 19, and was subsequently shut down.

Sony has since been criticized for the time it took to reveal this information. Yesterday, a spokesperson posted an update online, saying, "There's a difference in timing between when we identified there was an intrusion and when we learned of consumers' data being compromised … It was necessary to conduct several days of forensic analysis, and it took our experts until yesterday to understand the scope of the breach. We then shared that information with our consumers and announced it publicly this afternoon."